Back then, the hedge between Gran’s house and Mrs Henderson’s had grown way over his head. It and the creek had marked the edges of Caleb’s holiday world. He’d avoided the hedge this last year. Its leaves whispered into the wind – their message was that he was cursed. So many changes had occurred, all at once. Dad had made a lot of late-night Skype calls to Ivy. Such an old, boring story, a man having an affair with his secretary – Caleb wouldn’t bother drawing it. Gran had died and left the house to him. Mum and Dad had argued. ‘We should sell up and invest the money for him,’ Dad said. They didn’t consider asking him. Unable to agree, they had done nothing. Soon, Dad had decided he wanted to live with Ivy instead of Caleb. Then Caleb had gotten into that stupid trouble at school. But that wasn’t really what had sent them out into the country. None of the other boys had to move. Anyway, Gran’s place had become home. Mum never had time to garden. There were no more neat rows of vegetables, the fruit trees grew spindly or died of drought and neglect. The yard Gran once carefully tended got overgrown with weeds that evolved into kindling.

And Caleb had been here that day, a year before the fire, when… No.

It was just one of the things he didn’t want to think about. Ivy was another. He’d have to think about her in Hawthorn, but at least she wouldn’t pace outside his room like Mum. And Ivy was the mother of his new brother. A brother, like Sean had seemed to be. Ivy probably wouldn’t trust Caleb to look after the baby. Which wasn’t fair. Caleb knew how he destroyed things, but Ivy destroyed things too. When Mum moved out of the Hawthorn house – Dad thought wives were replaceable – Ivy had moved in. Mum found a job at Brunton Primary School. Mum said Caleb should be happy here, where people pretended to know them, because they’d known Dad. And Gran. One street in town, parallel to the disused railway line, was Wharton Street, named for one of Dad’s ancestors. Dad was a local success story. City lawyer. Occasionally interviewed on television. People said Caleb looked like Dad – Dad said they were peas in a pod. That Caleb was a chip off the old block.